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209 books match the query 'Alaska' and 19 start with t

cover of Tanana Chiefs: Native Rights and Western Law

Tanana Chiefs

Native Rights and Western Law

Edited by William Schneider

University of Alaska Press, 2018

At the turn of the twentieth century, life was changing drastically in Alaska. The gold rush brought an onslaught of white settlers to the area, railroad companies were pushing into the territory, and telegraph lines opened up new lines of communication. The Native groups who had hunted and fished on the land for more than a century realized that if they did not speak up now, they would lose their land forever.

This is the story of a historic meeting between Native Athabascan leaders and government officials, held in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1915. It was one of the first times that Native voices were part of the official record. They sought education and medical assistance, and they wanted to know what they could expect from the federal government. They hoped for a balance between preserving their way of life with seeking new opportunities under the law.

The Tanana Chiefs chronicles the efforts by Alaska Natives to gain recognition for rights under Western law and the struggles to negotiate government-to-government relationships with the federal government. It contains the first full transcript of the historic meeting as well as essays that connect that first gathering with the continued efforts of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which continues to meet and fight for Native rights.
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cover of Ted Lambert: The Man Behind the Paintings

Ted Lambert

The Man Behind the Paintings

Ted Lambert

University of Alaska Press, 2012

Ted Lambert is regarded as one of the premier Alaska artists, a true pioneer. Born in 1905, and raised in the Chicago area, Lambert moved to Alaska in 1925 and went to work as a miner near McCarthy. He held several jobs, predominantly working at a copper mine and mushing dogs—first for adventure, and then as a mail carrier.
Lambert left Alaska in 1931 to study art for a year at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, then moved to Seattle, where he began a mentorship under Eustace Ziegler, with whom he traveled throughout Alaska and painted. Eventually Lambert settled down in Fairbanks, where he stayed for twenty years and solidified his reputation as a painter and an artist.
But in 1960 he disappeared from the remote cabin he was living in at Bristol Bay. No trace of his body was ever found, but among the effects rescued from his last home was a memoir of his early days in Alaska. Presented here and never before published, these memoirs reveal Lambert to be a keen and intelligent observer and relay the adventure story of a young man who would become one of Alaska’s most important artists.
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cover of The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics

The Alaska Native Reader

History, Culture, Politics

Maria Shaa Tláa Williams, ed.

Duke University Press, 2009

Alaska is home to more than two hundred federally recognized tribes. Yet the long histories and diverse cultures of Alaska’s first peoples are often ignored, while the stories of Russian fur hunters and American gold miners, of salmon canneries and oil pipelines, are praised. Filled with essays, poems, songs, stories, maps, and visual art, this volume foregrounds the perspectives of Alaska Native people, from a Tlingit photographer to Athabascan and Yup’ik linguists, and from an Alutiiq mask carver to a prominent Native politician and member of Alaska’s House of Representatives. The contributors, most of whom are Alaska Natives, include scholars, political leaders, activists, and artists. The majority of the pieces in The Alaska Native Reader were written especially for the volume, while several were translated from Native languages.

The Alaska Native Reader describes indigenous worldviews, languages, arts, and other cultural traditions as well as contemporary efforts to preserve them. Several pieces examine Alaska Natives’ experiences of and resistance to Russian and American colonialism; some of these address land claims, self-determination, and sovereignty. Some essays discuss contemporary Alaska Native literature, indigenous philosophical and spiritual tenets, and the ways that Native peoples are represented in the media. Others take up such diverse topics as the use of digital technologies to document Native cultures, planning systems that have enabled indigenous communities to survive in the Arctic for thousands of years, and a project to accurately represent Dena’ina heritage in and around Anchorage. Fourteen of the volume’s many illustrations appear in color, including work by the contemporary artists Subhankar Banerjee, Perry Eaton, Erica Lord, and Larry McNeil.

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cover of The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada

The Crooked Stovepipe

Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada

Craig Mishler

University of Illinois Press, 1993

Named for a popular local fiddle tune, The Crooked Stovepipe is a rollicking, detailed, first-ever study of the indigenous fiddle music and social dancing enjoyed by the Gwich'in Athapskan Indians and other tribal groups in northeast Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Though the music has obvious roots in the British Isles, French Canada, and the American South, the Gwich'in have used it in shaping their own aesthetic, which is apparent in their choice of fiddle tunings, bowing techniques, foot clogging, dances, and a distinctively stratified tune repertoire.
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cover of The Entangling Net: Alaska's Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Lives

The Entangling Net

Alaska's Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Lives

Leslie Leyland Fields

University of Illinois Press, 1997

  "Truly remarkable portraits
        of courage." -- John van Amerongen, editor, Alaska Fisherman's
        Journal
      "These little-known tales
        of women working in Alaska's commercial fishing industry make for great
        reading. . . . Readers will be amazed by their stories." -- Laine
        Welch, Alaska Fish Radio
      "A richly textured story,
        a multi-genre text that invites readers to witness women's conversation
        with America's last frontier, Alaska." -- Patricia Foster, University
        of Iowa
      Why do women choose an occupation
        that has been ranked the most dangerous in the nation? What do women give
        up--and get in return--when they take on the tasks of fishermen? The
        Entangling Net explores these issues through the stories of twenty
        women who have chosen to work in this extremely risky, male-dominated
        profession.
      Leslie Leyland Fields lyrically
        weaves their stories with her own experiences as a fishing woman. She
        tells of long, exhausting days in skiffs, catching fish in brutally cold
        weather on waters that are often violent. Her words and those of the women
        she interviews convey the paradoxical relationship the women have with
        commercial fishing: they face extraordinarily difficult working conditions
        made more difficult and dangerous by male crews and skippers who don't
        welcome women, yet they feel impelled by the challenge of the work to
        return to their jobs season after season.
 
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cover of The Last Layer of the Ocean: Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska's Wild Coast

The Last Layer of the Ocean

Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska's Wild Coast

Mary Emerick

Oregon State University Press, 2021

There are five layers of the ocean, though most of us will only ever see one. The deepest layer is the midnight zone, where the only light comes from bioluminescence, created by animals who live there. In order to see, these creatures must create their own light. They move like solitary suns, encased in their own bubbles of freezing water. This is the most remote, unexplored zone on the planet. Though hostile to humans, it’s a source of rapt fascination for Mary Emerick, who would go there in a heartbeat if she could.

The year Emerick turned 38, the suicide of a stranger compelled her to uproot her life and strike out for Alaska, taking a chance on love and home. She learned how to travel in a small yellow kayak along the rugged coast, contending with gales, high seas, and bears. She pondered the different meanings of home from the perspectives of people who were born along Alaska’s coast, the first peoples who had been there for generations, newcomers who chose this place for themselves, and the many who would eventually, inevitably leave. When she married a man from another island, convinced that love would stick, she soon learned that marriage is just as difficult to navigate as the ocean.

Divided into sections detailing the main kayaking strokes, with each stroke serving as metaphor for the lives we all pass through and the tools needed to stay afloat, this eloquent memoir speaks to the human need for connection—connection to place and to our fellow travelers casting their bubbles of light in the depths.
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cover of The Origin and Distribution of Birds in Coastal Alaska and British Columbia: The Lost Manuscript of Ornithologist Harry S. Swarth

The Origin and Distribution of Birds in Coastal Alaska and British Columbia

The Lost Manuscript of Ornithologist Harry S. Swarth

Christopher W. Swarth

Oregon State University Press, 2022

At the time of his death in 1935, Harry S. Swarth, head of the Mammalogy and Ornithology Departments at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, had been preparing a manuscript reflecting on twenty-five years of his research in coastal Alaska and British Columbia. “The Distribution and Migrations of Birds in Adjacent Alaska and British Columbia” summarized Swarth’s research, ideas, and conjectures on the bird life in the region, including theories about when and how birds populated this vast territory after the retreat of glaciers near the end of the Pleistocene. Drawing on his field experiences and his forty published scientific papers, Swarth’s manuscript represented state-of-the-art science for the time. And his ideas hold up; his papers are still cited by ornithologists today.

In 2019, Christopher Swarth, Harry’s grandson and a scientist in his own right, discovered the forgotten manuscript. This book includes the original unpublished manuscript, accompanied by contextual essays from contemporary ornithologists who examine the impact and relevance of Swarth’s research on coastal bird diversity, fox sparrow migration, and the systematic puzzle of the timberline sparrow. Expedition maps display field camps and exploration routes, and species checklists illustrate the variety of birds observed at key field sites. To bring additional color and insight, The Origin and Distribution of Birds in Coastal Alaska and British Columbia also includes excerpts from Harry Swarth’s field notes, a comprehensive list of Harry Swarth’s publications, and a glossary with historic and contemporary bird names. Naturalists, ornithologists, birders, and all those who want to learn more about the natural history of the region will delight in the rediscovery of this long-lost treasure.
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cover of The Same River Twice: A Boatman's Journey Home

The Same River Twice

A Boatman's Journey Home

Michael Burke

University of Arizona Press, 2006

In the summer of 1991 Michael Burke, an experienced river guide, embarks on a three-week journey down a series of remote rivers in British Columbia. Leaving behind his pregnant wife, he embraces the perils of a voyage with a companion he barely knows in a raft that may not weather the trip. He attempts to reconcile the shifting fates of his life—his transition from river guide to husband, father, and academic. At the same time, he hopes to explore his connection to a distant relative, Sid Barrington, who was a champion “swiftwater pilot of the North” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As Burke contemplates what he and Sid may have had in common, he meditates on the changing meaning of rivers, and the impossibility of fully recovering the past. In clear and graceful prose, Burke blends Sid’s colorful history with his own uncommon journey. He also reflects upon the quick currents of time and the fierce passion he shares with Sid for the life of river running in Alaska and the west. Unlike most river-running books that often describe waterways in the lower forty-eight states, The Same River Twice introduces readers to rough, austere, and unfamiliar rivers in the northern wilderness. Burke has an intimate understanding of these remote, free-flowing rivers. He effectively captures the thrill of moving water, the spirit of rivers and river canyons, and the life of river guides. This insightful memoir brings readers into a confluence of rivers, where past and present merge, revealing the power of wilderness and the truth about changing course.
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cover of The Williwaw War: The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War II

The Williwaw War

The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War II

Donald Goldstein

University of Arkansas Press, 1992

When the 206th Coast Artillery Regiment of the Arkansas National Guard was called into federal service in January of 1941, few of the soldiers saw this action as anything more than a temporary detour in their lives. The war, after all, was in Europe and Asia and did not seem to involve them; many of the men thought they would serve their one-year enlistment and go home. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that.

The Williwaw War highlights the event sthat shaped the service of Arkansas’s 206th in the Aleutian Islands, including the Japanese strikes on Dutch Harbor on the third and fourth of June 1942, as well as the naval battle of the Komandorski Islands and the recapture of Attu and Kiska.

Written by the noted co-authors of the best-welling books on World War II, The Williwaw War chronicles the efforts of the men of the 206th as they battled terrible weather, overwhelming boredome and deprivation, and the Japanese, who were succesfully attempting to distract the Americans from the main Japanese assault on Midway Island.

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cover of There's a Moose in My Garden: Designing Gardens in Alaska and the Far North

There's a Moose in My Garden

Designing Gardens in Alaska and the Far North

Brenda C. Adams

University of Alaska Press, 2013

What do you do when a young moose calf wants to dine on your freshly planted Lady’s Mantle for lunch? What plants can handle a summer of nearly endless sun? How do you harness the wild beauty of the north for your own backyard? There’s a Moose in My Garden is the first book to tackle these questions and more with practical, user-friendly advice from an award-winning gardener.

Adams provides helpful tips for Far Northern gardeners on how to design and implement successful landscape environments. The book outlines the entire planning and planting process, covering such aspects as handling low-angled sun, soft light, expansive vistas, and a cool climate.
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cover of Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians

Thousand-Mile War

World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians

Brian Garfield

University of Alaska Press, 1995

The Thousand-Mile War is a powerful story of the battles of the United States and Japan on the bitter rim of the North Pacific, that has been acclaimed as one of the great accounts of World War II. Author Brian Garfield, a novelist and screenwriter whose works have sold some 20 million copies, was searching for a new story when he came upon this "forgotten war" in Alaska. He found the history of the brave men who had served in the Aleutians so compelling that he wrote the first full-length history of the Aleutian campaign. The book remains a favorite among Alaskans and WWII history buffs.

The war in the Aleutians was fought in some of the worst climatic conditions on earth for men, ships, and airplanes. The sea was rough, the islands craggy and unwelcoming, but the most fearful enemy was the weather—the savage wind, fog, and rain of the Aleutian chain. The fog seemed to reach even into the minds of the military commanders on both sides, as they directed their men into situations with often had tragic results. Frustrating, befuddling, and still the subject of debate, the Aleutian campaign nevertheless marked an important turn of the war in favor of the United States.

More than half a century after the war ended, more of the fog has been lifted. In this updated edition, Garfield supplements his original account drawn from statistics, personal interviews, letters, and diaries, with more recently declassified photographs and significant additional illustrations.
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cover of Threadbare: Class and Crime in Urban Alaska

Threadbare

Class and Crime in Urban Alaska

Mary Kudenov

University of Alaska Press, 2017

Alaska’s perch at the geographic corner of civilization isn’t all wilderness and reality TV. There’s a darker side too. Above the 49th parallel some of the nation’s highest rates of alcoholism, suicide, and violent crime can be found. While it can easy to write off or even romanticize these statistics as the product of a lingering Wild West culture, talking with real Alaskans reveals a different story.

Journalist Mary Kudenov set out to find the true stories behind this “end-of-the-road” culture. Through her essays, we meet Alaskans who live outside the common adventurer narrative: a recent graduate of a court-sponsored sobriety program, a long-timer in the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center for women, a slum-landlord’s emancipated teenage daughter, and even a post-rampage spree killer. Her subjects struggle with poverty and middle-class aspirations, education and minimum wage work, God and psychology. The result is a raw and startling collection of direct, ground-level reporting that will leave you deeply moved.
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cover of Through Their Eyes: A Community History of Eagle, Circle, and Central

Through Their Eyes

A Community History of Eagle, Circle, and Central

Edited by Michael Koskey, Laurel Tyrrell, and Varpu Lotvonen

University of Alaska Press, 2018

The towns of Eagle, Circle, and Central are tucked away in the cold, rugged, and sparsely populated central-eastern interior of Alaska. These communities have fewer than three hundred residents in an area of more than 22,000 square miles. Yet they are closely linked by the Yukon River and by history itself.
Through their Eyes is a glimpse into the past and present of these communities, showing how their survival has depended on centuries of cooperation. The towns have roots in the gold rushes but they are also located within the traditional territories of the Hän Hwëch’in, the Gwichyaa Gwich’in, and Denduu Gwich’in Dena (Athabascan) peoples. Over time, residents have woven together new heritages, adopting and practicing each other’s traditions. This book combines oral accounts with archival research to create a rich portrayal of life in rural Alaska villages. Many of the stories come directly from the residents of these communities, giving an inside perspective on the often colorful events that characterize life in Eagle, Circle, and Central.
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cover of To Russia with Love: An Alaskan's Journey

To Russia with Love

An Alaskan's Journey

Victor Fischer with Charles Wohlforth

University of Alaska Press, 2012

Son of the famous American journalist Louis Fischer, who corresponded from Germany and then Moscow, and the Russian writer Markoosha Fischer, Victor Fischer grew up in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, watching his friends’ parents disappear after political arrests. Eleanor Roosevelt personally engineered the Fischer family’s escape from Russia, and soon after Victor was serving in the United States Army in World War II and fighting opposite his childhood friends in the Russian and German armies. 

As a young adult, he went on to help shape Alaska’s map by planning towns throughout the state. This unique autobiography recounts Fischer’s earliest days in Germany, Russia, and Alaska, where he soon entered civic affairs and was elected as a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention—the body responsible for establishing statehood in the territory. A move to Washington, DC, and further government appointments allowed him to witness key historic events of his era, which he also recounts here. Finally, Fischer brings his memoir up to the present, describing how he has returned to Russia many times to bring the lessons of Alaska freedom and prosperity to the newly democratic states.
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cover of Tongass Odyssey: Seeing the Forest Ecosystem through the Politics of Trees

Tongass Odyssey

Seeing the Forest Ecosystem through the Politics of Trees

John Schoen

University of Alaska Press, 2020

Tongass Odyssey is a biologist’s memoir of personal experiences over the past four decades studying brown bears, deer, and mountain goats and advocating for conservation of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The largest national forest in the nation, the Tongass encompasses the most significant expanse of intact old-growth temperate rainforest remaining on Earth. Tongass Odyssey is a cautionary tale of the harm that can result when science is eclipsed by politics that are focused on short-term economic gain. Yet even as those problems put the Tongass at risk, the forest also represents a unique opportunity for conserving large, intact landscapes with all their ecological parts, including wild salmon, bears, wolves, eagles, and other wildlife. Combining elements of personal memoir, field journal, natural history, conservation essay, and philosophical reflection, Tongass Odyssey tells an engaging story about an enchanting place.
 
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cover of Trapline Twins

Trapline Twins

Julie and Miki Collins

University of Alaska Press, 2005

Identical twins Miki and Julie Collins lead a subsistence life in a remote area north of the Alaska Range in Alaska’s wild interior. This dual autobiography of adventure shines with their love of the wilderness and of the sled dogs that are their loyal companions
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cover of Treadwell Gold: An Alaska Saga of Riches and Ruin

Treadwell Gold

An Alaska Saga of Riches and Ruin

Sheila Kelly

University of Alaska Press, 2010

A century ago, Treadwell, Alaska, was a featured stop on steamship cruises, a rich, up-to-date town that was the most prominent and proud in all Alaska. Its wealth, however, was founded on the remarkably productive gold mines on Douglas Island, and when those caved in and flooded in the early decades of the twentieth century, Treadwell sank into relative obscurity. 

Treadwell Gold presents first-person accounts from the sons and daughters of the miners, machinists, hoist operators, and superintendents who together dug and blasted the gold that made Treadwell rich. Alongside these stories are vintage photos that capture both the industrial vigor of the mines and the daily lives that made up Treadwell society. The book will fascinate anyone interested in Alaskan history or the romance of gold mining’s past.

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cover of Trouble Will Save You: Three Novellas

Trouble Will Save You

Three Novellas

David Nikki Crouse

University of Alaska Press, 2023

In these three deeply observed novellas, award-winning author David Nikki Crouse dramatizes the lives of women living in Interior Alaska. Each novella acts as an extended meditation on grief, loss, and the nature of imagination. Crouse’s usual storytelling gifts are on full display here, but the darkness found in past short story collections is balanced by images of stark beauty. In “Misfortune and Its Double,” a woman remembers—and manufactures—the story of an arduous cross-country drive that might not be entirely true. “A Rough Map of the Interior” follows a woman’s life from suicide attempt to hospitalization to a new kind of self-knowledge, and “Asmodeus Speaks” lingers on a Dungeon and Dragons roleplaying game in remote Fairbanks and its disruption when one of its players, a young Yupik man, goes missing.
 
While Crouse’s prize-winning collection of short fiction The Man Back There offered up insights into a kind of self-destructive masculinity, these novellas now sensitively and persuasively capture the inner landscapes of women struggling with grief and isolation. Trouble Will Save You is a unique and fully realized work from a keenly empathetic writer.
 
Praise for The Man Back There:
“In this virtuoso collection of stories, David Crouse guides us directly to where the shadow lies—the disorienting loss, the surprising heartache, the forgotten wound—those inevitable areas of the psyche we all share and through which only truth, illuminated with a such a light touch here, can deliver us; The Man Back There is the work of the real thing.”
—Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
 
“I chose these stories because they made me feel. I felt the characters like I would feel a stranger in a room or on a bus with me, with an irrational sympathy more animal than moral in its nature.”
—Mary Gaitskill, 2007 Mary McCarthy Prize judge
 
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cover of Two Women in the Klondike

Two Women in the Klondike

Mary Hitchcock

University of Alaska Press, 2025

Two Women in the Klondike created a sensation when it was first published in 1899. The idea that two well-bred socialites could survive the dangers of the north thrilled nineteenth-century readers from San Francisco to New York.

When Mary Hitchcock heard about the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1898, she left her privileged city life for the wilds of Alaska, planning to stake her own claims. She persuaded her friend Edith Van Buren to accompany her, and the two began preparations for "roughing it." The "necessities" that they brought up the Yukon River to Dawson City, Canada, included a portable bowling alley, an ice cream maker, a Great Dane named Ivan, and a full-size circus tent.

Hitchcock relates the struggles, surprises, and pleasures of traveling in the late nineteenth century in her trademark style. She describes in diary form the people she met and her impressions of rural Alaska and Dawson City. Invaluable for its detailed descriptions of manners, food, and personalities, Hitchcock's account of the Klondike Gold Rush is an outrageous adventure for general readers, armchair travelers, and anyone interested in the lives of American women in the late 1800s.

This new, abridged version includes a map of Hitchcock's northern travels and an introduction by Terrence Cole, professor of history at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

 

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